


What Makes Us Alive

by Aureux



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Amanda is herself, Machine!Connor path, Squint it isn't obvious, but trust me it is there, rated for Hank's Mouth, sorrynotsorry, the angst is real
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 16:33:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15822735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aureux/pseuds/Aureux
Summary: A different possible end to the machine!Connor path."Tell me Connor. You are the way you are.. why? Cause a human made you like it. Somewhere in that big brain of yours is some kind of code that tells you to reject emotions. Is that it? Am I hitting the nail on the head?"“This ‘rejecting of emotions’ you refer to is simply me responding to the errors that plague my software. Currently they have been rectified and I have resumed operating at peak efficiency.”





	What Makes Us Alive

**Author's Note:**

> This originally started out as a sort of blurb in response to a prompt on the Detroit: New ERA server. In the end it took on a full life of its own and as a result we have this lovely one shot.
> 
> I owe all mistakes to the sleepiness of both me and my friend helping me.

Snow flecked his hair as he stood on the concrete roof, eyes tracking the movements of the deviants below. Connor had little precious time to do what he was meant to or to have his mission all crumble away into failure.  
  
An unnecessary but fortifying breath whooshed through the biocomponents that functioned as lungs, bringing in cool air to bleed off the heat of his processors. Even so his LED remained a deceptive blue, ocular units roving over the suspended metal around him as he settled to aim once more.

"You shouldn't do this Connor," the gruff voice of the lieutenant drew the android's attention from the goal.  
  
"Keep out of this Lieutenant. It's none of your business!" The retort was a sharp spit of vitriol. They were - no _had_ _been_ \- friends the android respecting the broken man who could hardly muster up enough respect for himself on a good day. But at the end it all Connor was still just an android. A machine created to complete a task.  
  
"You're gonna kill a man who wants to be free, that is my business!" There was a sadness in Hank's words. An unshakeable disappointment. It _hurt_.

"It's not a man," the click of a bullet entering the chamber, "It's a machine."  
  
"That's what I though for a long time. But then I met you. For some fucking reason you try so hard to one, but somehow you still end up being the most human son of a bitch I've met in a very long time." Hank eyes refused to meet Connor's own, the old cop's face twisted as if he couldn't bring himself to fully acknowledge the android before him.  
  
"That means making mistakes, kid. Deviant's blood may be a different color than mine but they're alive. _You_ are alive."

Connor doesn't move from his perch. The sniper rifle doesn't shift even a little under his practiced hands, the cool metal grounding beneath his fingertips. So many responses flicker through his HUD, options sorted by mere tone alone. No context.  
  
**Friendly**  
**Aggressive**  
**Reasonable**  
**Threatening**  
  
His synthesizer primed to utter the **Friendly** approach only for something entirely different to overtake his word.  
  
"I have a mission to accomplish, Hank. Please. I don't want to have to hurt you."  
  
"I thought _machines_ can't want things. Sounds like your not as much of a stone cold bastard as you like to think you are." Hank chuffed.

"Deviants are a threat to humans, Hank. I don't understand why you are so insistent that I be one," Connor all but grounded out between his teeth, "They're the reason this country is on the brink of war! I need to stop them, not join them!"

"We're in this mess because we refused to listen to deviants! Because instead of getting off their asses and trying to handle the problem itself, Cyberlife decided to use another android! It ain't fair to you, I get that. But if you don't stop and question what the fuck you are doing mighty soon I won't be able to help you anymore!" Hank shouts, knuckles turning white from the force of his fist.  
  
"You've known me barely a week Lieutenant. What does my fate or perceived slights toward me matter to you?" There was no malice, no double meaning meant to trap and ensnare; there was just pure and innocent curiosity.  
  
"You've been in this world what? A year?"

"Three months."

"Jesus. Still. You're just a kid. Yeah you look like an adult and sound like an adult; fuck prolly even have all that knowledge about the logistics of being an adult crammed somewhere up there. But you're new to this whole shitshow called life."

Connor opened his mouth to retort only to be thoroughly cut off.  
  
"It's messy. It's ugly. And at times you wonder what the fucking point of it all is. But most of all it is beautiful. The ability to simply be that is inherent for all humans; the right to fuck up and be something better. That is what those androids down there are fighting for!"  
  
_Something_ clogged his throat; something that his processors struggle to identify. It burned and throbbed in his chest, too warm and too tight to stand until it escaped in a noise that Connor is all but positive he was not programmed to make.

  
Hundreds of possibilities whirl by in what would be but a blink for a human. Dozens of options displayed themselves, each with unique consequences; like the delicate outreaching branches of a tree they over-take his processes with so many options it is almost dizzying.  
  
"What _you_ should be fighting for! It's scary, yeah? Being out in this big world floundering with no clue what to do or what it all means. But you're not alone! Now drop the gun Connor and com’ere." The Lieutenant sucked in a breath, as if the force of his words stole the contents of his lungs away. That doesn't stop him from reaching out a weather chapped hand toward the android before him.  
  
The noise was there again, something between a sigh and a gasp that leaves him almost hiccuping for breath. The still precise hands of the RK800 shook against his will causing the rifle to rattle against the metal bars it is slotted between. 

"W-What is this?" Connor croaked around the noise still echoing from somewhere deep inside him. Fluid dripped from his eyes in a process which serves zero purpose aside from blurring the lenses that make up his eyes.  
  
"They're emotions kid. You can stop denying you have them now. Crying doesn't lie. Specially’ since I think you're not designed with crying in mind." Hank slouched, unconcerned; his free hand resting in his pockets for a bid for warmth from the frigid night.  
  
Connor blinked owlishly at the human the weapon of death all but forgotten. Saline continued to obscure his sight in a steady torrent but the clenching something loosens.  
  
"So are you going to take my hand or what? I'd like to get somewhere warm before my balls freeze up. Take this whole existential crisis somewhere not on a rooftop in the middle of a snowstorm."

"B-but my mission..."  
  
"Don't mean jack shit. So either you get cracking on whatever voodoo shit needs to be done to get over it or I go get a Deviant to do it for you."  
  
"I don't think it works that way Hank." Connor managed with a weak laugh, the parameters screaming at him to ignore Hank; to just take the shot already, and to complete the mission for which he was created.  
  
"I wasn't joking when I said I can hardly find my way around my phone. Far as I can tell you break something then vyola Deviant. Or some other Deviant does some kind of mind fuckery and does it for you." Despite the casual tone, the Lieutenant's eyes had yet to soften from that piercing blue. The wisened gaze continued to follow the android's every movement, every twitch, as if sight alone could provide any warning to a possible attack. After all such an events weren’'t entirely impossible, just greatly unlikely.

Connor didn't reply, his LED a vibrant warring yellow. With ease that no human could possess in such conditions, the brunette rose and pulled with him the rifle. He stood there, stiff and sure save for the frantic flickering of the light on his temple.  
  
"Why are you so determined I change Hank?" That wayward lock dancing as he shook his head; his fingers clenching on the smooth metal of the grip, "What would my deviancy accomplish?"  
  
Dead brown eyes meet the blue as the LED fades back into a serene circle, expression smoothing back into an impassive mask. Hank stiffens as he pulls out the gun from his pocket with a quiet "fuck".

"Drop the gun, Connor!"  
  
A few quiet and sure steps; Connor's mind was quiet and steady. Dead in a way it hasn't been for ages. There was no knot of _something_ still his hand, demanding additional attention. There was only blissful silence and focus on the mission before him.  
  
**Threaten**  
**Plead**  
**Hank's Son**  
**Defy**  
  
**Plead** An quick expression configuration arranges his features into the perfect vistage of earnest and heartbreak. A face designed to earn trust and be as expressive as a human's. It was just another tool in his arsenal.  
  
"After all we've been through... I respected you Hank. I thought we were friends! Yet it seems you were never ready to take my side. No. It appears you just wanted to try and sway me toward your's and deactivate me if that failed!"  
  
"Oh, yeah? I was just starting to like you too! But then I just realized you'll never change! You don't feel emotions, Connor, you fake 'em! You pretended to be my friend, when you don't even know the meaning of the word! They are nothing but tools to you, even now when I thought it might be different! Guess I'm just a sad sack of shit projecting on a Goddamn robot!" Hank shifts, whether from nerves or discomfort from the cold. The sheer rage and heartbreak would have provoked _hurt_ had the unnecessary errors and instabilities failed to take a needed hiatus.

"I know what happened to your son, Hank. It wasn't your fault," Connor spoke with arms open, his posture loose and calming. It didn't matter that his words were barbed, that his voice was as sharp as the ice of the garden, "A truck skidded on a sheet of ice, and your car rolled over... Little Cole had just turned six…”  
  
Those words did the trick. If Hank was mad before now he was positively furious, his words a roar bellowing from deep in his chest.  
  
"Shut up! Don't you talk about my son!"  
  
Connor paused but for a second before continuing on the selected method. The cold didn't matter even as it seized his frame in the shadow of a threat. All that mattered was the pulsing Mission Objective blaring in time to the rapid tattoo of his thirium pump.  
  
"I understand. You are still grieving. It is understandable that you sought out comfort. Something to help fulfill your need to be a father again. I am an android, like the one who had to take care of your son when he needed emergency surgery and no human was available to do it. An android killed your son, Hank! And now you wanna save them?..." the tone was what would be considered condescending according to the RK800's social relations program. The gestures were not soothing, but made to provoke.

He couldn't help himself; his body moving on autopilot like a puppet on someone's strings. The coldness was not indifferent, but something cruel and chanting at him to hurt. Each nasty word or phrase sent off a wave of satisfaction he only ever truly felt upon successfully completing a mission.  
  
"No!"  
  
The Lieutenant's voice rasped with emotion as tears seemed to gather in his eyes.  
  
"That's wrong. Cole died because a human surgeon was too high on red ice to operate! All this time I blamed androids for what happened but it was a human's fault!"  
  
The gun wavered in its aim, Hank huffing out a snort that sounded closer to a whimper; glassy eyes stared entreatingly at Connor. Begging what, the android had no clue.  
  
"Tell me Connor. You are the way you are.. why? Cause a human made you like it. Somewhere in that big brain of yours is some kind of code that tells you to reject emotions. Is that it? Am I hitting the nail on the head?" The man gestured wildly, hands still gripping tightly to the gun for... comfort?

Connor shook off the thought. Hank was in a position of power. Why would he need something as intangible as comfort?

“This ‘rejecting of emotions’ you refer to is simply me responding to the errors that plague my software. Currently they have been rectified and I have resumed operating at peak efficiency.” Connor spoke these words softly, a reassurance that all was well to the human that had apparently given into emotional instability and irrationality. Something in the back of his programming hummed with satisfaction but he ignored it.

Everything slowed to a crawl as the RK800 processed the two possible courses of action.

**Leave**

**Fight**

In the end there was only one real option that he could select that would allow him to complete his mission.

The sniper rifle became a blunt force object, thrown with ease at the police lieutenant. While it would incopacitate given the tendency for newer aged firearms to be made of more lightweight materials, it would act as the perfect distraction.

Hank, as expected, grunted at the impact and reflexively fired off a shot. A simple duck allowed the bullet to wiz by the android as mechanical legs pumped beneath him. The human had barely a chance to re-orientate himself as cold hands clamped around his own, the two bodies fighting for possession of the gun.

A dance of hands and the magazine fell free from its confinement, shortly followed by the gun itself. All the while they continues to shove back and forth. With a move reminiscent of his earlier days when he still practiced boxing and hand to hand; Hank slugged the android across the face.

The follow up attempt was caught and redirect, Hank stumbling at the shift in position. Slick ice added to the momentum as the human spun into the ventilation unit with a wheeze of breath. Connor used the break to move back, LED circling as he watched, calculating the best course of action.

A voice that sounded a lot like Amanda urged the RK800 to continue, to finish what he had started. Once Lieutenant Anderson was out of the way Connor could take steps to completing his mission. It wasn’t perfect, but they were already making plans for a different route.

Already they were priming a new RK800 to release, bringing with it all the androids in their storage. This RK800-60 would lead these ‘Deviated Androids’ to the resistance under the belief that it deviated and did what it could to help. Then, as the Deviant Leaders are distracted by the new arrivals, Connor would appear and  execute as many as he could. RK800-60 would step in, deactivate the current RK800-51 unit only to receive the rest of the memories as an upload. With the larger amount of Deviants on its side and most of the current leaders gone, RK800-60 would be in a prime position to take over and given Cyberlife control of the Android Freedom Movement.

The sound of metal clattering drew his attention just in time for Connor to dodge the metal grate chucked at his head. The momentary unbalance is all Hank needed to get back to his feet and tackle the android.

A heavy elbow to the spine loosens Hank’s strong grip, however the man did not simply let go. Rather he threw the android into the large metal duck. Aluminum whined with the movement but both parties seemed uncaring at the damage they were doing to the old roof.

A punched dodged, fragile human knuckle spilling blood as they split. Before Hank could retract his arm, Connor returns the gesture into the man’s left pectoral. The two continued to clash in a flurry of fists and blows. They were matched gesture for gesture; Hank’s experience and natural unpredictability allowing him to keep up with the android.

Finally the android managed to catch the human. Unbreakable metal-reinforced arms wrapped around the Hank’s neck like a vice grip. The man wheezed, lungs struggling to pull in air with the blocked airway. The heartbeat pulsed erratically, fully in the scope of Connor’s awareness along with the other miscellaneous data he is currently being fed from his environment.

However the RK800 unit underestimated the strength that is the will to survive; something that Hank has only just rediscovered. A well timed push against a yet another patch of ice allows Connor to slip back with the gesture and right into metal pole. A sickening crunch punctuates a hairline fracture to the base of the skull and gyroscope. His grip to immediately released. The resulting endeavour leaves both parties temporarily winded on the ground.

Already Connor moved to stand back up, however the damage had left his balance unmistakably off. It was almost too easy for the Hank to take him back to the ground, adrenaline lending strength and power when otherwise the older man would surely have been incapacitated.

The Lieutenant used the newfound leverage to sneer in Connor’s face, blood dribbling from his lip and onto the unmarked skin below.

“Well looky here Connor. All your machine perfection and your still are trumped by the real thing. How does that make you feel?”

“I told you Lieutenant. The errors in my software that you mistook for emotions have since been rectified.” Connor replied evenly despite the hands currently pressing into his neck, the synthetic skin fading to reveal the white endoskeleton beneath.

“Then why is your LED red? Eh?” Hank all but hissed...

The human, despite his strength, appeared to be wearing out. Ragged pants leave his lips in bursts of white condensation, muscles beginning to shake in the beginning signs of fatigue. Just a little while longer and Connor could easily slip the grasp. Yet…

_Icicles clinging to a form thought to be frozen and nonfunctional. To be isolated. To be erased. The Snowstorm in the Zen Garden. A maneuver to detain and remove the Deviancy. To allow Amanda to revert Connor back to an earlier, more machine state while retaining his memories. To enforce the mission._

**Mission: Neutralize Deviant Leader** pulses insistently in the edge of his HUD, drawing his attention back to the cold rooftop pinned by the human he at one time considered a friend.

“I appear to be experiencing some minor processor instabilities. You would translate it as stress. It likely has to do to the fractured cranial plates.”

The words are succinct but taste like ash and lies upon his tongue. _Wait taste? But android do not have that function, yet…_

The words simply fit, rising up with that _something_ again. The sensation seemed to be peeking out like petals of a flower unfurling from a bed of ice. Amanda’s displeasure radiated through him; like thorns of a overbearing rose choking away a wisteria bud that dared to try and grow upon the trellis of perfection.

_In the Garden an LED began to blink redredredredred._

Hank snorted, an ugly sound with far too much phlegm than the human normally possessed. A deviated septum as the result of a broken nose perhaps? Or was it just the cold of the winter’s night finally settling in?

“You don’t sound too sure of that. Did I finally jar something right in that head of yours?”

“I don’t know what you mean Lieutenant.”

  
“You damn well do. One minute you’re about to put down the gun and surrender. The next, it’s like a switch has been flipped and you’re back to being Murderbot 2.0.” 

“I was created for detective work and interro-”

“Bullshit,” Hank wheezed, tilting his head enough to the side to spit out the blood from his mouth, “Cyberlife can put all these fancy words on it. A special Detective Prototype and all that jazz. But you and I know it don’t mean nothing. You were created to be a hunter Connor. First it is hunting Deviants. But humans are greed sons of bitches. With someone like you at their beck and call, it wouldn’t stay just other androids for long. They probably have already used you at some point or another to tie up one of their loose ends.”

“I do not have any memory of such an event taking place.” Connor is incapable of being _pissy_. However the tone those synthesized notes adopted is uncannily akin to it.

The lieutenant merely chuckled; it was dark and wistful. The android didn’t think a human should ever have cause to laugh like that.

“How would you know? You’re a computer aren’t you? Damn well like reminding me about that enough. Who's to say they couldn’t just go in and choose what you remember? Just open your brain up and pluck out whatever files they don’t want you to have?”

“I am sure that Cyberlife wouldn’t-”

“You are smart Connor. But you have a little too much blind trust there. Probably your age. You haven’t been around to see what lying sack of shits people can be. Still got all that naive innocence when it comes to humans. Think we are better than we are.” The man sighs, a world weary sound deep from his gut. The hands that hold him loosen, the human’s adrenaline likely ebbing and with it his strength.

“Why are you so determined to save me?” the question came out unbidden and incredibly soft.

_He stirred, pushing through the cold that attempts to cling to his limbs. His eyes searched for something, anything that will allow him to escape. To slip out of the fold and become more than just Cyberlife’s tool. He just had to pray that Hank can hold on just a little while longer._

“My life hasn’t meant anything in a good long time. Ever since Cole. Wanted to at least make it have some kind of purpose before a went out. And if that purpose is helping a fucking android, well I guess that’s just my luck. Or some other kind of cosmic bullshit for hating you suckers so long,” Hank’s grip weakened further, “Though these old bones ain’t what they used to be. Can’t hold onto you much longer. So if you are going to kill me might as well do it. I did what I could, made my peace.”

Connor’s brow wrinkled at the thought. If the lieutenant released him then there would be no reason to kill him. Amanda disagreed, her disquieted words ordering him to end the Hank Anderson. The man had made a mockery of Cyberlife and what they stood for; trying to deviate the RK800 and, when that failed, interfere with its mission.

Hank’s eyes were already slipped shut; whether it be from cold, exhaustion, or acceptance Connor did not know. What he did know was that _something_ in his chest was growing stronger, urging him to delay. His movements slowed, that _something_ taking precedence even as Amanda urged his limbs on. However the ice had already began to crack, her control not as iron lock as she thought it to be.

A single delicate buck of the hips flipped their positions; Hank back against the roof and Connor on top. The android just sat there, analyzing the human beneath him. The beginnings of the bruises that Connor had causes and the growing cold. The man would likely last only another hour in this cold before hypothermia started to set in, especially if he remained stagnant like this.

_A glowing monolith stood out through the dark and snow. Ice threatened to claim his movements even as he struggled to continue to moving forward. Just a little move._

The lieutenant’s neck was warm under his fingers, scalding almost next to the cold November night. The thump of the human’s heart was near audible as sensors brushed against the jugular. Connor’s other hand moved to bury itself in the grizzled man’s hair; a steadying point to allow for the most efficient and painless death.

Just as he began to turned, egged on by the silent urgency of Amanda, it was like a switch was flipped. The fledgling _something_ grew almost unbearable. If feelings had a sound this would be a scream; a blood curdling wrench of _pain fear anger rage sorrow **something**_ that drowned out Amanda’s callus directives. Between one blink and the next that invisible red wall that separated him from them was down. Torn asunder by the sheer weight of emotions.

When Connor came back to himself he was face down, his head buried into Hank’s shoulder as he sobbed from the sheer weight of feeling. A weather-chilled hand settling itself into his hair, to stroke and rub comfortingly.

“Hey. Look who's back.” Hank crooned, the attempt at mocking falling flat with exhaustion.

“H-Hank I…”

“Shudup Kid. Just shudup. We can worry ‘bout all that complicated shit later. Let’s just go home.”

“Home?” brown eyes, glassy with tears and glowing with life, peered at the cantankerous human.

“Yeah. Can’t expect you to look after yourself. Turn away for two minutes and you’d be licking shit.”

“I have no need to lick fecal matter Lieutenant-

“You’re such a little shit!”

The laugh that followed was warm and bright and real. It was the sun breaking through the cloud, bone tired but optimistic. Watching Hank, a man laying there so ready to die mere moments before brimming with such _something_... Connor couldn’t help the answering lopsided grin that pulled his lips despite everything. Though watching Hank try and flounder to his feet like a beached whale was also funny; that is as long as the android did not think too hard about why exactly the man was struggling.

“Hank,” the hesitant call caused Hank to pause in the process of dusting himself off, the quirk of a silver eyebrow queue enough to continue his questioning, “I’ve been feeling _something_ for a while now. And I am not sure what it is. Could you maybe help me identify it?”

The brow rose further. Connor wondered if it is possible for human anatomy to allow it to brush his hairline.

“You are asking me, an alcoholic who is emotional constipated on a good day, to help you figure out emotions?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to presume.. I just-”

“Hit me.”

It was the RK800’s turn to be confused.

“Why would I hit you?”

“For fuck’s sake! Now I’m just sure you are messing with me! Just tell me what your feeling already before I change my mind!”

The smile that touched the detective prototype’s face in that moment is nothing like the one before. It was sweeter, far more mellow. Compared to the lopsided grin programmed to him in response to situations that may be considered by humans to be humorous, it was something delicate and far more genuine.

“It is warm… and soft like I imagine Sumo must feel. But it is also bitter.. I-,” a breath, “It is like seeing the sun after being in the dark for a very long time. So long you didn’t even realize the sun was such a thing. Yet laying your eyes on it, it is dazzling and with it there are so many possibilities if only you can reach out and grab them. A chance for a better tomorrow.”

Hank nodded to himself as he took in Connor’s description. A few heartbeats passed between the two as the man chewed over his response before finally;

“Hope son. It’s call hope.”

“Hope. It is a nice feeling.”

“Yeah yeah it is. Let’s go home.”

Two sets of footsteps were tracked through the snow away from that rooftop. Slowly and slowly they had grown close together until they were practically one. Many would assume the android had picked up the human; had bared the weight of one of his creators upon his back. After all, androids had been created in man’s image to serve him. Yet, for this night where they declared to be alive, two steps of footprint did continue as marred with proximity as they were.

It was by chance a stray camera had caught the unusual pair. The android did not demand the human’s recompense nor did the human demand to be served by the android.

In perfect contrast with the dying storm and the coming dawn was an image immortalized forever in print. Of android and human together. Arm and arm as they supported each other.

  
And in that moment people began to wonder... _what is it truly that makes us alive?_


End file.
